playing as the French

[themonkey]

Hey anyone know who I should attack first as the French?
I've found uniting France better everyone give their opinion

[Accounting Troll]

Attack the English before they attack you. In the early period Toulouse will soon be taken by the Aragonese if you don't take Anjou.

Then attack the HRE - everybody hates it and it can easily be carved up between France, Denmark, Poland, Hungary and Italy.

[Cebei]

I say consolidate your territory in the continental Europe (kick Brits into their island) and assign high piety governors to your provinces (especially to ones that has a chapter house). Then send emissiaries to the Asia Minor and Levant and wait for any wars (Byzantium/Turke/Egypt) that would create the instability you need to launch a succesfull crusade. Then launch a crusade TO Syria. Consolidate Syria and start building units there. From there you can lauch attacks against the holy places.

[Bhruic]

I'd go with the English first, simply because your provinces are so intertwined. But after that, I'd probably hit the Spanish next (well, and Aragonese), and continue into the Almohads. It's a nice 1-border attack system, gets you some good lands, and more importantly, gets you a nice concentration of iron provinces. Plus, how can you say no to Jinettes? :)

Bh

[nick_maxell]

Get rid of the english not only on the continent, but totally - if you leave them England they will send crusades draining your troops and attack you (and loosing Flanders even if only for one turn is bitter as you will loose infrastructure you will need time and money to rebuid after reconquering (and destroying more)

Then do either as Troll suggests or go North for Denmark, Sweden and Norway, or south for the iron (and to get rid of any nasty crusade the spanish will send) and the one province border as soon as you get Marocco, which frees up troops you can use on the eastern side.

Different if you play GA - still get rid of the english but you should take Tripoli asap to have enough building time.

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/cheers.gif

nick

[son of spam]

English, HRE, and then Spanish/aragonese in regualr game.

In medmod, I go English, Aragonese/Italians, Spanish, and then HRE. The idea is to make the HRE very strong, cause it'll still fall apart quickly when you attack it. However, the other factions might quickly overrun the HRE, and then you'll have an undefeatable superpower (probably Italians) right next door...

[katank]

well, hit aquitaine first turn with everything in toulouse and brittany and everything else thrown at anjou.

this will cause both to withdraw without battle and aquitaine force to be ransomed.

don't forget a token peasant force in flanders and queueing up a UM in ile de france who will be a 5* hero.

at the same time, seek an alliance with HRE with princess and try to bribe welsh longbows with emissary. 50% of time, I get them which aids with taking wessex nicely.

why not normandy? first turn, you don't have enough to take all three and you want to take two adjacent ones to get a ransom and normandy's 1* for general is not as important as an extra hobilar for the brits this early on.

anyhow, reinforce flanders, take normandy.

then hit wessex and mercia simultaneously if possible and storm quickly to try and avoid excomm.

inn in flanders is good for mercs to rassist the rush into the isles.

if excommed, go for HRE as they will war with you sooner or later or go south.

otherwise, consolidate and tech to ships to make the krak easier.

[Xecthilor]

On the times when I play as the French, I usually try to blockade Wessex with a large enough force to keep the English from attacking from England itself, then I try to take Normandy and the other English provinces in mainland France. As far as what you do then, it depends on your preference and how the world is progressing, but either way it gives you a solid, united base.

[themonkey]

well I'm currently in year 1165
i have conquered all of England (I decided It was best I took them before 1179 for Iredand's sake)
One of the First things I did was ally with the papacy, very handy later
I lulled the English by becoming Allies and building Massive armies in Brittany and Ile de France http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-oops.gif
Then I took Normandy to cut off reinforcements,then I marched south and took all France without being Excommunicated Now I prepare Troops to take Castile and then encircle the Aragonians(tell me if I used the wrong word)
and took all of Northern Spain.
Now I plan http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-gossip.gif
on my attack on the Almohads

[Court Jester]

The real question is who you go for after throwing the English off the Continent -- I would lean towards attacking the Spanish/Aragonese, rather than the HRE, as the HRE has so many more enemies, borders and other problems. If the Spanish take the Iberian peninsula (which seems always to happen in my games -- I have yet to see the AI's almos amount to anything), and start building a fleet, they can become rich and powerful very quickly ... with no where to go but towards Egypt, and towards you. I learned this the hard way the first time I played as the French, as I was taken by surprise and watched my highly armoured troops die in showers of javelins from mongol-proportioned armies of jinettes....

[katank]

I agree with much of that although I would say kill off the english completely and at least take part of HRE before heading south.

The HRE are liable to war with you. It's inevitable.

the border of toulouse, anjou, ile de france, champagne, and flanders is too hard to defend. 5 provinces all home provinces if GA including your capital as well as richest province.

I liek to head into provence, burgundy, lorraine, and friesland in a mini blitz.

do this fast and within a year you'll have an HRE civil war.

consolidate and guard the 4 province border before you head south and take out first the Aragonese because they are little jack@sses who like to take Toulouse and the spanish.

as for jinnettes, they are not a problem that much.

Use 4-5 spears for a staggered spear wall and march forward shielding your 9-10 archers.

have some light cav ready to rumble too.

use the spears/archers as a mobile fort and shoot the hell out of all the jinettes.

they simply become pincushions as your archers far out ranged them.

when they are mostly decimated, maneuver the ligth cav out and then get behind them without spooking the jinnettes or getting your lgiht cav surrounded and cut up.

then, turn them into 1 line formation for a giant net and charge at your own lines.

the jinnettes would skirmish away right into the spear wall where they get impaled on spears.

I've used this technique to kill the little jack@sses. this is provided I dont' get some of my own.

jinettes and gallows in addition to crusade troops are two of my main reasons for playing catholic.

[Dauvin]

Quote[/b] (nick_maxell @ May 04 2004,15:46)]... if you leave them England they will send crusades draining your troops and attack you ...
Slightly off topic, but I was wondering something about a comment made, hopefully quoted here.

So, when a Crusade parks its butt in your province (on the way to somewhere else), does it slowy take your own troops stationed in the same province? I think I noticed this, as I had troops with not full numbers who had never been in battle, but the number of troops in the Crusade was going down, actually, and when I looked more closely at who (of my troops) was in the same province, they never dropped in numbers.

[katank]

well, the drain is only if the province is high zeal and the commander is high piety.

if the commander of the stack has 0 piety and the zeal is very low, negligible numbers of troops will actually get sucked up.

france, spain, HRE, northern Italy, and esp. Papacy provinces all have fairly high zeal as well as Poland and Hungary.